{"id":26602,"date":"2020-04-13T20:14:24","date_gmt":"2020-04-14T00:14:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/?p=26602"},"modified":"2020-04-13T20:14:24","modified_gmt":"2020-04-14T00:14:24","slug":"95-confidence-predictions-regarding-coronaplague","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2020\/04\/13\/95-confidence-predictions-regarding-coronaplague\/","title":{"rendered":"95% confidence predictions regarding coronaplague"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/covid19.healthdata.org\/united-states-of-america\/massachusetts\">The model of coronaplague with the best graphics<\/a> says that Massachusetts, home to 2% of Americans, will suffer 12% of total COVID-19 deaths (8,219 out of 68,841, through August 4, 2020).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>How sure can we be of this result?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/arxiv.org\/pdf\/2004.04734.pdf\">&#8220;Learning as We Go: An Examination of the Statistical Accuracy of COVID19 Daily Death Count Predictions&#8221;<\/a> (Marchant, et al., April 8, 2020) says &#8220;not very&#8221;:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>Our results suggest that the IHME model substantially underestimates the uncertainty associated with COVID19 death count predictions. We would expect to see approximately 5% of the observed number of deaths to fall outside the 95% prediction intervals. In reality, we found that the observed percentage of death counts that lie outside the 95% PI to be in the range 49% &#8211; 73%, which is more than an order of magnitude above the expected percentage. Moreover, we would expect to see 2.5% of the observed death counts fall above and below the PI. In practice, the observed percentages were asymmetric, with the direction of the bias fluctuating across days.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>So&#8230; the model was &#8220;wrong&#8221; (actual fell outside predicted 95 percent range) as much as 73 percent of the time!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The model of coronaplague with the best graphics says that Massachusetts, home to 2% of Americans, will suffer 12% of total COVID-19 deaths (8,219 out of 68,841, through [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coronapanic"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - 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